EVENTS

Police made her father sign a “pledge”

And then there are those strange coincidences – like when a woman complains to the police that her father and brother beat her, and they are arrested but then released on bail, and three days later the father takes her body to a clinic where a doctor issues a death certificate. Spooky, isn’t it.

The men, from al-Samu near Hebron, were detained for four days, but a court released them on bail on July 18.

Randa’s brother has told south Hebron prosecutor Mohammad Gaboon that on his release he returned home and beat Randa on her face and chest. “She lost her conscious and I left the room at that time,” he said.

On July 21, Randa’s father took her body to a clinic, where a doctor issued a death certificate.

And the family hastily buried her, without a funeral.

Several months before her death, Randa had sought police protection from her father and her brother, said Farid al-Atrash, the regional director of the Independent Commission for Human Rights told Ma’an.

In January, she filed complaints with the family protection unit and at police stations in al-Samu, where she lived, and Yatta, a nearby town. Police made her father sign a “pledge” to stop beating her.

The beatings continued and Randa approached the Independent Commission of Human Rights on Feb. 4.

“We called the family protection department to find her a safe house, but family protection said that her father and brother promised to find her a job,” al-Atrash said.

Oh well in that case – obviously she’s perfectly safe staying with them.

Randa was living with her family after her husband threw her out, Hiyan Qaqour, a lawyer for the Women’s Center for Legal Aid and Counseling told Ma’an.

Aged 28, Randa was forced to marry a 78-year-old man from Beersheba, in Israel, her mother told Ma’an.

They were married for six years and he regularly beat her, the lawyer said. Randa complained to Israeli police, who arrested him. On her husband’s release, he sent her back to her family in as-Samu in the southern West Bank, Qaqour added.

Got it. Shit life, and shit death. Treated like shit by her birth family, and the man she was forced to “marry,” and the institutions around her.

Comments

How long will it take for that familiar waffle “The actions of men are evil, not the god behind them!” to wear thin? This is precisely the nightmarish story I relate to people when they claim to get their morals from religion.

Sad and tragic. What an awful life and death that poor woman had. No one she could count on. No one she could trust. Having to fear the very people who were supposed to love her the most. And in the end physically beaten to death—robbed of her life—by her own father. This is deeply disturbing.

Religion is a human construct which enables and encourages vile human behavior. But religion is not “independent” of the culture which surrounds it. It’s more like a vicious circle, or a feedback device, that exacerbates the worst attributes (and sometimes the better) of the particularly nasty primate known as man.

Ryan: As there is no “god”, which can act in any way,then it is indeed the actions of evil humans and debauched human culture which is to blame. It is not apologia which leads one to make the statement “not God but evil men”. Especially as evil men write the religious texts, and “culture” evolves through the actions and history and self justifications of evil men…or at least confused human beings.

bmiller: “It’s more like a vicious circle, or a feedback device, that exacerbates the worst attributes (and sometimes the better) of the particularly nasty primate known as man.”

Disagree. But you have a point. Better ‘it’s more like a vicious circle, or a feedback device, that exacerbates the best attributes (and sometimes the worst) of the particularly genial primate known as Homo sapiens.’

Having visited several countries where Islam is the dominant religion, I can only say that it is not all murder, mayhem and collective insanity by any means. Just some of the time. Those societies could not function if it were otherwise.

Its stories like these that make me want to run up to hug my dad for letting me be me, and for supporting me no matter what. We may argue and fight, but he is my dad, and we will always be there for each other.